Bainbridge, GA

Nothing says Summer like fresh, sweet corn and producers here in Southwest Georgia are hard at work getting this season’s crop out of the field and to market. One operation that’s doing just that is Rentz Family Farms, and according to Manager, Kevin Rentz, other than a couple of hiccups, it’s been a decent season for growing sweet corn.

“It started off really warm when we started planting, then we had a cold snap which just kind of gave us some issues with some of these earlier fields we planted, but it’s starting to shape up now,” says Kevin Rentz, Manager of Rentz Family Farms. “We’re getting into some better corn. It’s been fairly mild all the way through though. Not really any terrible temperatures to hurt the crop.”

Rentz says that so far, this year’s harvest is going well, and the crop has turned out to be a good one.

“Harvest has been good so far. Like I said, we had a little bit of issue with our first few plantings from that little cold snap, but the corn quality is really picking up now. Harvest is going good. We’re fixing to be past the Memorial Day push, so, we’ll slow down for about a week and then we’ll start ramping back up for Father’s Day and fourth of July,” says Retz. “We try to make our first planting come off before Memorial Day. We try to get as much in the pipeline because that’s a big push. You know, barbecues and people going to the beach. So, we try to get a 100-150 acres out for Memorial Day, and then we kind of slow down a little bit. Then Father’s Day is a big holiday for cooking, then of course, fourth of July is a big one. So, we try to plant our acres to match the times when the demand is the most.”

According to Rentz, however, sweet corn isn’t the easiest crop to grow, as he says it’s fast paced and requires a lot of attention.

“It’s a pretty fast-paced crop. You know, once the seed’s in the ground, you’ve got to stay on top of it, getting your fertilizer out, especially, once it tassels. We’re pretty much trying to scout this stuff pretty regular; make sure no worms are in it. We have to come out and make some pesticide applications, but it’s very fast-paced. It’s a short season crop. You know, normally, seventy-five, eighty days, we’ve got this crop in and out, which is a good thing about it. I enjoy growing sweet corn because it’s so fast paced, and we can get another crop in behind it once we get this out,” says Rentz.

As you can see, it’s also a labor-intensive crop as well, as Rentz says it’s best to harvest sweet corn by hand.

“It’s gentler when everything is hand harvested, I mean they see every ear, they feel every ear. We try to throw out the bad stuff as it’s going, where if it was machine harvested, it would just take everything. There’s human error involved in that too, but it’s just a smooth operation. It’s kind of like a well-oiled machine the way they do this being hand harvested,” says Rentz.

By: John Holcomb